Mayor Daley Defends City Funding to Charity / Chicago News Cooperative

Mayor Richard M. Daley today staunchly defended the increased flow of City Hall dollars to the youth charity founded and led by his wife.

The mayor’s comments came in response to Thursday’s story by the Chicago News Cooperative about the rise in city funding for Maggie Daley’s charity, After School Matters.

At a news conference today to promote a city recycling program, Mayor Daley said the charity got more money “because after school matters.”

He added, “It’s not my wife’s charity. It’s a charity for teenagers in Chicago. Are you questioning my wife now?
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I hope you realize, I hope your company gave money to the after-school programs, because they provide great programs, and we’ll find out if New York Times had given money to it,” he said.
The Chicago News Cooperative produces the “Chicago” section for the New York Times.

Daley’s press secretary, Jacquelyn Heard, later said the city has maintained or increased funding for many social service programs – “not just Maggie Daley’s program.”

City records show $15 million in Chicago taxpayer funds went to After School Matters in 2009. But officials say the marked increase is due to the fact that they were a year behind in their payments to the group and paid them last year for work done in 2008 as well as 2009.

Still, even using the city’s accounting method, the charity received more than $10 million from the city last year for work that it did in that same year. That figure is almost double what After School Matters got from the city in 2005.

“What’s wrong with that?” Mayor Daley said. “These are wonderful programs in the city to take teenagers away from gangs and drugs. After school programs [for]a lot of poor kids. They’re not wealthy kids. Poor kids in the city. It’s one of the best programs in the country. It’s been adopted worldwide by other cities. It is a program that brings artists from the community in to work with young people. And it’s really … one of the best programs we’ve adopted in this city.”

Maggie Daley, who has been fighting cancer for eight years, founded the group in 2000. In the past 5-1/2 years, it has received a total of more than $46 million from the city.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Dateline: Chicago. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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